


Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen

by vivilove



Series: Match Days [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blended family, Domestic Fluff, F/M, First Love, Jonsa children, but also written as a gift, very self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25427938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivilove/pseuds/vivilove
Summary: Minisa Hardyng subtly studies her reflection in the full-length mirror beside her bed. She doesn’t look any different than she did this morning and she didn’t really expect she would but maybe tomorrow morning when she wakes she will. Maybe just a little bit?Tomorrow is her sixteenth birthday…and tonight she is quite positive she is in love. If ever there was a combination to make a girl look more like a young woman, that would be it, wouldn’t it?
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Match Days [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1456750
Comments: 42
Kudos: 89





	Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kit_Kat21](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit_Kat21/gifts), [Descend_N2_Madness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Descend_N2_Madness/gifts).



> This is partly self-indulgent and the Jonsa is more background than anything but I wrote it as a birthday gift for Katie who is the proud president of the Mina Hardyng Fan Club as well as an amazing writer who shares her lovely stories with our fandom 🎂❤️.
> 
> Also, gifted to Descend since today is his b-day and who loves this little family, too 🎂😁.
> 
> It is set several months after the epilogue chapter of A Match.

Finished with her essay, Minisa Hardyng subtly studies her reflection in the full-length mirror beside her bed. She doesn’t look any different than she did this morning and she didn’t really expect she would but maybe tomorrow morning when she wakes she will. Maybe just a little bit?

Tomorrow is her sixteenth birthday…and tonight she is quite positive she is in love. If ever there was a combination to make a girl look more like a young woman, that would be it, wouldn’t it?

But the girl looking back at her is astonishingly the same, same red hair and blue eyes and smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. Practically Anne Shirley. Would that make Tom her Gilbert? But Tom has never once teased her over her red hair and she likes the name Tom far better.

She watches her hand in the mirror drift up to the butterfly necklace around her neck, the one he gave her when they were just kids.

“Dinnertime, kids!”

Alright, to _some_ people, they _are_ still kids.

She feels flustered hearing her step-father’s voice when she’s been standing here consumed with romantic feelings for the boy presently sitting on her bed, her study partner and object of her affections who is currently finishing up his Lit essay.

“We’re coming, Jon!” she calls back through the open door, the door that absolutely must remain open when Tom comes over to study because that is a firm rule that isn’t to be broken.

Sometimes, Lyarra invites Beren from next door over to watch movies and forgets the rule. Obviously, when their parents say something she immediately opens the door again but not before huffing, _“It’s just Beren,”_ under her breath because they’ve known each other since they were little and she simply doesn’t see what Mina sees when she sees them together. Someday, she thinks her step-sister will see it though with the way poor Beren can’t seem to string two sentences together in Lyarra’s presence without stammering and flushing lately.

Honestly, Mina would be a little afraid to break the open-door rule even if there was zero chance of getting caught because she’s not ready to be behind a closed door with a boy yet, even one she’s in love with the way she just knows she’s in love with Tom.

“Ready to eat?”

“Always,” he says with the cutest grin. It’s true. Mina would say she’s never seen someone eat as much as Tom does if her friend Parker wasn’t exactly the same. Her mother only smiles and says, ‘teenage boys’ with a shrug when Mina mentions fearing for any wandering fingers with the way they inhale food like savages who’ve not been fed in a month.

She hears Jon coming down the hall on his crutches. He had knee surgery last week and is still recovering. He’s very tired and she knows it’s no picnic at all. The doctors had said it might be best if he not play soccer anymore either, even for fun like he does, since this is his second knee surgery after the one he had in college ending his competitive playing days. It makes her very sad to think of Jon not getting to do the thing he loves anymore. Nevertheless, he doesn’t complain and has been trying to do all his Dad Duties like normal since yesterday until Mom catches him and makes him sit down and rest.

He pokes his head in the doorway just as Tom is putting his books and papers back into his backpack.

“Your mom ordered pizza tonight; pepperoni, cheese and barbeque chicken.” Life has been a little topsy-turvy this week with Jon out of commission and Mina can’t blame her mother for going simple, especially with an extra hungry mouth to feed.

“Sounds good,” Mina nods, still trying to master that blasted fluttery, self-conscious feeling from a few seconds ago.

“Did you kids get your essays finished?”

“We did.”

“Yeah and we’re ready for pizza, Mr. Snow.”

“Great.”

Jon heads on down the hall towards the master bedroom to get the medication he’s taking with meals for the time being. Mina starts to offer to fetch it for him since he’s really not supposed to be moving around so much yet but Tom grasps her lightly by the wrist.

“What are you doing on your big day tomorrow, Birthday Girl?”

She bites at her lip the way Tom asks that. He’s being flirty and she loves when he’s flirty. They’re not dating yet because Mina’s not allowed to date yet, at least not dates that involve a boy picking her up in his car and taking her somewhere. He’d asked once and she’d told him she could go out on that kind of date after she turns sixteen and as long as her parents have met the boy. _Tomorrow, I’ll be sixteen._

For now, they’ve been in this friendly, flirty stage where everyone seems to expect that they _will_ be dating before long but it’s unspoken. Mostly, they see each other at school or hang out together with groups of friends. And from what her other friends say, Tom’s not been asking any other girls out on dates so she considers that very promising that he’ll ask her again soon.

“Well, school for one thing.”

“Bummer. What else?”

She giggles and says, “My mom is making a cake and the family is all coming over. My grandparents, great uncle, aunts, uncles and cousins.”

“Sounds like a full house.”

“It will be.” She sort of rolls her eyes the way she thinks teenagers must when forced to participate in mandatory family fun like birthday cake but she doesn’t really mind at all. She loves her huge and noisy extended family. “My dad and step-mom are coming and bringing my new little brother, too.”

Her father Harry Hardyng had married Myranda, the school secretary at Chelsea Elementary where Jon is the principal, and they’d had a baby a few months ago. Mina loves little Aaron so much but she doesn’t get to spend nearly enough time with him like she does with her other half-siblings who are Jon and her mother’s children.

There’s a little part of Mina that worries about her father slipping away from her now that he’s married and has another baby, a baby he means to do things right by from the very start now that he’s much more grown up than he was when she was born. She tries to banish the little jealousies, fears and insecurities she feels over that as best she can. Her father loves her and tells her so every chance he gets. He was always so much fun when she was little but she can see how he's a better father to her now. 

He’ll be coming to see her tomorrow though along with Myranda. She loves Myranda. She's a lovely step-mom and a lot of fun…but Mina can't see herself ever loving her quite the same way she loves her other step-parent. 

“Guess you won’t get to stay after school for my match then, huh?”

Tom is on the varsity soccer team at school, a starter even though he’s a sophomore like her. He’s a little older than most of the other sophomores though since his mom kept him from starting kindergarten until he was nearly six. He’s already got his license and a car.

Lyarra and Mina have been going to every single match of theirs this spring; Lyarra because she’s on the girls’ team and the boys’ team came to support them during the fall and she says its only right that the girls try and do the same. Mina goes because her sister goes…but mostly because she wants to watch Tom play.

Jon has been to a handful of the high school boys’ team’s games with the girls to watch and so he can talk to his old boss Ms. Tarth. He agrees Tom is one of the best on the team and it makes Mina feel very proud.

“No, I’m sorry I can’t tomorrow.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s your birthday. I’m sorry I can’t see you blow out your candles.”

Oh, doesn’t that make her feel all zippy inside? “If you wanted to come over after your match, I don’t think my parents would mind. I’d save you a slice.”

“A slice of cake sounds good,” he says with another one of those grins that makes her all melty and quivery inside.

That reminds her that dinner is waiting though so she starts to leave when Tom stops her a second time.

“What’s this?”

She sees what he’s reaching for and can’t stop him in time. She no longer feels all melty and quivery. She’s embarrassed and her stomach twists uncomfortably.

“That’s, um…Lady.” Tom grins wryly, looking toward the doggy bed in the corner of her room where her dog is currently snoring. “Well, not the _real_ Lady but my first Lady. When I was four, my Uncle Robb gave me her for my birthday. She’s…” Mina straightens and decides she has nothing to be embarrassed about. If he’s the sort of boy who’s worthy of her love, he won’t make fun of her. “She’s special to me.”

Lady, the stuffed husky friend who has always been her favorite by far and who still sleeps in Mina’s bed each night even though she’s nearly sixteen, is special. Someday, Mina might go away to college. She won’t be able to take her real dog named Lady with her but she’ll bring this Lady with her. She doesn’t care if anyone thinks it’s childish either. Her mother and Jon would never say that. Lyarra wouldn’t either. Abby, who is her best friend right after her step-sister, still sleeps with Mr. Bun-Bun-Bunny who she got when she was little so there’s no way she can tease her over Lady.

Normally, Mina’s bed is made every morning before she leaves for school because that’s what she’s supposed to do but she’d been running late this morning and, with everything else she had to do, her mother hadn’t noticed. Mina had barely had time to throw her comforter over her sheets when Tom had arrived so Lady’s been sitting right at the head of the bed barely covered and, as they’ve been sitting and working, she’s worked her way out and into view.

“She looks very well loved,” Tom says as he inspects Lady. Does he mean that as a statement of fact or is he teasing her?

“She is,” she says a little defiantly. She’s not nearly as fluffy as she was when Mina received her all those years ago but she’s still soft and Mina’s heart still knows contentment when she snuggles her close at night.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you and you’re a very lucky little doggo, Lady,” Tom says…right before he kisses Lady’s nose and winks at Mina!

Could anything be more swoony?! Mina’s bound to be tomato red as she grins back at him when he hands her Lady. She hugs her, very much tempted to kiss her nose where Tom just did but instead setting her proudly on top of the comforter before the two of them go to join the others at the table at last.

"Mina? Are you feeling alright? You look very flushed," her mother whispers when they line up to get a slice of pizza.

"I'm fine." _I'm in love._

Later that night, with her teeth brushed and face washed, she tiptoes into her parents’ bedroom. Her mother is still up after tucking in the little ones but Jon is already in bed asleep. She creeps over to their bookcase to find something in particular.

“Sansa?” he mumbles, rousing.

“No, it’s me, Dad.” Most of the time, he’s Jon but sometimes, she calls him Dad. She’s stopped worrying over the why of it and she knows it never fails to make him happy when she does.

“You alright, sweetheart?”

“Yes, just wanted to look at one of the albums tonight.”

“Muh-huh,” he says drowsily so Mina kisses his forehead and leaves once she has the one she wants.

When Lyarra Snow was little, her father had made his daughter a photo album with pictures of her birth mother Val in them. Val had died in a car accident when Lyarra was a baby and Jon had wanted to give Lyarra something to help Lyarra remember her. That photo album is still one of Lyarra’s favorite possessions, even over her Man U jerseys. Mina thinks it’s very special, too.

Mom has made several such albums over the years and there’s really something special about them in Mina’s opinion, like looking through a window into our past. She treasures them in a way that many teenagers might not and Mina’s favorite one is the Birthday Album her mother has started making to commemorate everyone’s birthdays.

Mina slips back into her room and under her covers. She tucks Lady beside her on the pillow and turns to the section that holds pictures from every single one of her birthdays.

If Minisa Hardyng looks back at her past birthdays, she would say that they were generally very happy. True, she didn’t remember the first few but there were pictures and, in them, she was always smiling.

Even her very first birthday had her showing off her baby teeth as she happily had a handful of cake smooshed in her chubby baby hand. Everyone in the family likes to tell her how she had innocently smeared her frosting-covered hand across Grandpa Ned’s cheek right after the picture was taken, too.

Her little sister Marna turned one not too long ago and the photos on Mina’s phone show a strikingly similar image that gives her such a happy flutter when she looks at them. Marna has the same auburn hair as Mina and her mother though it’s also curly like Jon, Lyarra and David’s. She also has blue eyes like Mina and Sansa’s but a few shades darker.

Sometimes, her mother’s brothers and sister say that Marna is a Mini-Mina just like they’d once said Mina was a Mini-Sansa. They’re not of course. Mina’s very much like her mother in some ways but her own person, too, just as Marna will grow into her own individual personality. But secretly, Mina will admit she adores how much her little sister looks like her since David and Lyarra take so much after Jon except for their blue eyes. It’s hard to tell who Little Aaron will look like but since Mina doesn’t look much like her father, it doesn’t really matter. Right now, he’s bald and toothless though he does have blue eyes and he is quite adorable.

The pictures from Mina’s second to fifth birthdays show her smiling with her mother on one side and her father on the other. She guesses Grandma took them though she can’t recall for certain. Looking at those pictures now, everyone is smiling but she wonders what her parents, especially her mother, might’ve been feeling that day. Her father had never married her mother and had stopped living with them altogether by the time her fourth birthday arrived, the birthday when Uncle Robb had given her Lady.

The picture from her sixth birthday makes her feel queasy. Her father wasn’t in those pictures and he’d said something important with work had come up…but he hadn’t even called her that day. When Mina looks at that picture, she sees her beautiful mother by her side smiling at the camera but there’s a strain in her eyes that a younger Mina never noticed.

Her father was at her seventh birthday party though. Chuck E. Cheese. Pure pandemonium that Mina had thought delightful. She grimaces just thinking of it now.

Her eighth birthday had been the first one that Jon and Lyarra had shared with her. At the time, he was Coach Jon who had started dating her mother and Lyarra was her teammate and friend but not her sister yet. She’d scored a soccer goal that morning in her match and been so proud but her father had come over to her grandparents’ house still smelling like what she’d once thought in her innocence was stinky cologne. There had wound up being some tears before all was said and done but after that, things had started to get better and her father had stopped letting her down by not showing up at things or by showing up and causing tension for her mother.

That birthday had also been the one where Tom had given her the butterfly necklace that she’s been wearing so often lately.

The following birthdays all have pictures of Mina surrounded by her mother, her father, her step-father and her sister and then her little brother and sister as they came along.

The one constant though in all those smiling pictures of Minisa Hardyng with a cake sat in front of her is her mother. Her mother has always been there for her and, when she thinks of Lyarra and the fact that there’s not a single birthday picture of her with her birth mother, she cannot help feeling extraordinarily grateful and blessed.

“Mina? Why are you crying, baby?”

She blinks and realizes her mother’s standing in her doorway. How long has she been standing there?

“I’m just happy, Mom. Guess I’m kind of feeling sentimental over tomorrow.”

“Sentimental?”

“It’s a milestone birthday tomorrow, isn't it?”

Her mother’s concerned look morphs into one of amusement. “It is. Sweet Sixteen, beautiful and brilliant, but they’re all milestone birthdays at your age, my darling girl.”

“When do they stop being that way?”

“I don’t know. I guess it depends on the person. May I join you?”

Mina nods happily. Time alone with her mother is something she treasures and will never roll her eyes over. 

With her mother under the covers and Lady between them, they sit looking at the old pictures from years past for a long while. They finish her section and look at Lyarra's next. 

Then, they turn to the ones her mother has added from her own past birthdays and Jon's. There's some from when they were little that Grandma and Grams had provided. The one of Jon with ringlets holding his Big Bird for dear life while eyeing the three candles blazing in front of him with trepidation always makes her laugh. Grams says it’s a favorite of hers too but adds that he'd been scared of fire at that age. Jon just grumbles under his breath wanting to know how that picture has managed to survive two transatlantic moves.

"You were sixteen in this one," Mina says, pointing to her mother with her hair all poofy and making a silly face for the camera with Aunt Marg by her side. They had been friends long before Aunt Marg had started dating Uncle Robb. 

"I was."

"Did you have a boyfriend when you were sixteen?"

"No, not a boyfriend."

"We look a lot alike, don't we?"

"We do." Her mother smiles and gives her a hug. Mina loves that she looks like her mother. Someday, she hopes she'll be as beautiful as she is although her father and Jon both tell her she's already a beautiful girl. 

There's newer ones for David's birthday parties. Monster trucks was the theme when they'd been at Uncle Benjen's cabin over Labor Day Weekend to celebrate David's Sixth. It had been a packed house indeed but a lot of fun.

“You’ve not added any to Marna’s section yet.”

“I know. I keep meaning to. It gets so hectic somedays.”

“I’ll do it if you like.”

“We could do it together.”

“Mom? Do you remember when you and Jon said I could start dating once I turn sixteen?”

“I remember,” her mother says with a barely contained smirk.

“I’m sixteen tomorrow.”

“Don’t I know it. We'll talk soon about this but tonight it's late and you've got a date with cake and family tomorrow, right?”

"Yes...but can Tom come over after his game tomorrow and have some cake?"

"Of course, he can. We'll be sure to save him a slice."

Her mother kisses her cheek and wishes her a good night. Mina settles for sleep though she’s too wound up at first and reads for while. She wonders what Tom is doing right now. She kisses Lady on the nose and pictures that she's kissing Tom instead. 

She could wait until midnight so it will officially be her birthday but her eyes are getting heavy. Dismissing that idea, she kisses Lady on the nose once more and hums to herself. She starts to drift off at last.

Her phone is silenced but when she wakes the next morning there’s a text from Tom right after midnight that makes her yelp with glee: **Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen.**

Mina rushes to her mirror, looking for any noticeable change. She stares a long time but she still looks the same. Her freckles are still there. Her boobs aren't any bigger. Her hair is messy since she's not brushed it yet. She's still the same girl she was when she went to bed last night.

Regardless, the boy she loves waited up so he could send her a text to be her very first birthday wish and she thinks tonight when she blows out her candles, she might wish that he'll give her her first kiss soon. She definitely _feels_ a little more grown up today.

She sends him a 'thank you' text and then hurries from her room to have some breakfast. 


End file.
